DOVES OLYMPIC MOVEMENT
The Doves Olympic Movement is an educational sports initiative based on the philosophy and principles of the Olympic Movement. Our program aims to use Sports toward achieving educational objectives, to promote global citizenship and to facilitate personal and cultural development in our global society. Our model includes learning of fundamental values and life skills through sports and engaging in selected educational topics that facilitate personal and cultural change and development. Through our model, children, parents and instructors from diverse socioeconomic background, race, gender, religion and ethnicity, come together and engage in activities that facilitate character development and promote social inclusion. We believe that Olympism provides the essential framework toward achieving our goals.The educational topics of our program include five domains, which we consider as fundamental building blocks toward achieving the objectives of our program:
- Ethics and Olympic development (personal and moral development)
- Technology literacy (how to communicate electronically and how to access information)
- Art and music (evening gatherings, camp fires, dancing, comedy shows and painting)
- Human Rights and Global Citizenship
- Environmental awareness (participation in excursions related to environmental matters)
- Health and well being (HIV awareness, nutrition, drug and alcohol abuse resistance)
To achieve our goals we implement activities and workshops to parents, children and instructors. Such practices facilitate the engagement of the agents that influence the most to the development of the new generation (parents, educators and children).
Our program is based on the latest scientific findings and we conduct research aiming to build bridges between theory and practice. Our ongoing research aims to investigate the effects of Sport and education toward developing the Humankind. We want to express our gratefulness to our "global friends" who provide continuous scientific support toward achieving the goals of our program.
Special thanks to the UNOPS/UNDP Bi-communal Development Programme (BDP) and our sponsors since without their support our vision would still be. just a vision. I would also like to thank the Center for Leisure Tourism and Sport (CLTS), the instructors, and the volunteers for making a dream come true.
We invite all the people that have a similar vision for the world we live in, to join us and contribute to the ".change we want to see in the (global) society we live in" (Gandhi).
Dr. Alexis LyrasFounder & Principal Investigator
University of Connecticut